by Jay McLean
Within those walls, invisibility is my best friend.
But Dana’s here, and she’s here for a reason, and that reason is why my parents no longer park in the garage.
It’s an ongoing circle, a continuous theme, and I’d rather be anywhere but here.
My parents don’t greet me when I step into the house, my mom grasping her glass of wine as if it’s the oxygen that gives her life, fills her lungs, makes her heart beat. My dad’s sitting next to her, and I wonder if he views her the same way I do, as if she’s given up on life altogether, or if he sees her the way she sees her alcohol. I sit on the couch opposite, ask them, “When’s Dana getting here?”
“Six,” Dad answers.
I check the time: 5:58, and I shift in my chair, wonder if I’ll survive the suffocating silence until she gets here.
I don’t have to wait long, thankfully, and when I open the door, the same Dana I’ve always known greets me with a hug, a kiss on the cheek. Her brunette hair’s down to her shoulders, green eyes light against her trademark heavy eye make-up. At least she hasn’t changed. Yet. “It’s good to see you, Noah,” she tells me. “How’s NC State treating you?”
“It’s fine.” In this house, everything is always fine.
She glances at my parents sitting on the couch and then back at me, a pitiful smile gracing the face I’d once crushed on.
I open the door wider for her, let her into the stillness.
“Hi, Mrs. and Mr. Morgan. Thank you for taking the time to see me.”
“Always, Dana,” Dad assures.
Mom nods.
We sit at the dining table and watch Dana fish out some papers from her backpack. She slides an envelope each toward my parents. “I know this is coming out of nowhere, and I’m sorry it took me this long. I’m also sorry for bringing up… memories,” she says.
My eyes narrow, mind lost in confusion, and I look to my parents for guidance, the way all kids should look at their parents, but they give me nothing.
Beneath the table, Dana’s hand finds mine, squeezes once. “Back in high school,” she says, “Christa and I—we made up a fake email account to try to catch my boyfriend cheating.”
I remember Christa telling me about this, but I have no idea why Dana’s bringing it up now.
“I hadn’t checked the email for a while. I had no reason to. But then I decided to sell the laptop, and I went through it all before deleting everything. There was um… well…”
Christa.
There was Christa.
“She wrote you these letters, emailed them to that account.”
My heart beats out of my chest while I try to breathe. Try. But the air is thick, and it’s not just the walls that are suffocating. It’s the thought that Christa—
Mom lifts the envelope, flips it in her hand, her eyes glazed, and I realize now that my mom has a letter. Dad has a letter. And I have… I have nothing.
I start to stand when Dana stops me. “Wait, Noah.”
“For what?” I croak.
She reaches into her bag, pulls out her laptop. “She didn’t write you a letter.”
“No shit.”
Dana flips open the screen, turns it toward me. “She made you a video.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Noah
The screen of Dana’s laptop flickers. First light. Then dark. Then light. Before my heart can begin to race, before my mind goes back to that moment, it flickers one more time, staying permanently lit. It’s the garage. The source of my nightmares. And then Christa… alive, but unwell. She sits down on what I assume is the stool, her dark hair (like mine) in a mess, knotted on top of her head. Her eyes, ocean blue (like mine) are red, raw, tired. Her cheeks are pink, wet with tears, tears she kept hidden from me.
But even in this state, even in her darkest moment, she’s still my sister. My blood. My inhale is sharp, shaky, and I feel my parents presence behind me as I fight back the urge to cry, to reach out with my fingertips, feel the glass of the screen, our barrier, and touch her. As if she were real. As if she were alive.
“Christa,” my mom whispers, her hand on my shoulder, the first time she’s touched me since… since Christa.
My sister looks up, her eyes locked on the camera. She smiles, and I wonder if she knew then what she was about to do, exactly how she was about to do it. She says, her voice nothing but a distant memory now, “Hey, Noah. You’re probably wondering why I left you a video and gave Mom and Dad a letter. The truth is, I don’t know. I just had this feeling in my gut that a letter wouldn’t cut it. Not with you: my best friend. My brother.” Her voice cracks, and my throat closes, and I let the tears fall, but hold in my cry. “I knew that a letter wouldn’t be enough. That you’d want to see me. One last time. That you’d want to hear my voice. One last time. That you’d want to hear that voice when it gives you reasons. Answers.” She wipes a tear with the back of her hand, her lips turning down, down, down until she sniffs back the hurt, the pain of what she’s about to tell me. “The truth is, there is no reason, Noah. There are no answers. There is no when. Or how. Or why. There is only darkness.
“For years, I’ve tried. For years, I’ve lied. For years, you were the only one who noticed. But when you asked me what was wrong or what happened…” She covers her mouth with the back of her hand, her shoulders shaking with her sobs, and I don’t want to know what she has to say. Did I not respond? Was I not aware enough? What did I do? Why, Christa, why? “I didn’t have the words to explain how I felt. I only had tears, tears I hid from you and everyone else because it was easier than justifying this... this darkness that lives and breathes inside me, in the walls of my heart and in the deepest corners of my soul, and I can’t shake it…” Her gaze lowers as she wipes more of her tears, and I take the time to do the same, my heavy heart pound, pound, pounding against my ribs.
When she looks back up, her face nothing but misery, she says, a slight laugh bubbling out of her, “I had so many things that I wanted to say and now... I guess I just want you to know that I’m proud of you. I’ll always be proud of you. And the phone calls tonight… they weren’t a cry for help. There was nothing you could’ve done. I simply wanted to see you. One last time. Hear your voice… one last time… Noah…” My name is nothing but a sob. “I feel like I can’t breathe and I know it’s my fault. I know if I just said or did something, that you would save me... that you would make me feel like my darkness matters, but I can’t. I just can’t.” She lets out a sob so heartbreaking, I feel the crack right through my chest. “Please don’t let this ruin you. Don’t let it break you like it’s broken me.” She shakes her head. “God, I’m so tired. I’m so tired of walking blind through the darkness. I’m tired of pretending. I’m tired of the never-ending pain in my chest and the tears in my eyes and I’m tired of trying to come up with a way to reach out, to hold on to someone or something because I feel like I’m drowning and I’m dying and the moments I feel most alive are when I’m closest to death.” She stops there, just like my heart, and I reach for my mother’s hand, hold it close to my chest, pray that the connection will revive it. “This is not your fault, Noah, please please please know that. This is no one’s fault.” She exhales softly. “It just... is.”
The talking ends, but the video doesn’t and please, please, please don’t show what she’s about to do. Please don’t show her setting up the thing that will kill her.
Christa’s gaze drops, her heavy breathing heard through the speakers… an eternity passes, and then her shoulders rise, her breathing steadies, and she looks up at the screen, her eyes clear, but lost.
God, she was so lost.
“Hey,” she says softly. So softly. “Do you remember when we were little, and I used to tuck you in at night? Remember how I’d stop at your door… and I’d say, ‘I love you, Noah.’… do you remember what you’d say back? You’d say…”
“I love you more,” I whisper through my heartache.
Christa smiles, as if she can hear
me. “And I’d smile, tell you, ‘That’s impossible.’…and you would always say back…”
I choke on my words. “It’s possible… and it’s true.”
“God, Noah,” Christa cries. “I’m going to miss you the most. And you can think of me as stupid for what I’m about to do, you can think of me as selfish, but please... please don’t ever stop loving me more. Please remember me as your big sister… standing at your doorway,… telling you I love you.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Andie
The day is long, longer than the days I spent in prison, which is saying something. But in prison, I had nothing waiting for me, nothing to wait on. Waiting on Noah is torture and turmoil and chaos and confusion. I spend half the time on the brink of tears, on the verge of panic. Milky finds ways to calm me down. Bradley stays quiet… what’s there to say?
Today, we live in a bubble, too afraid to step outside in case the consequences of my past are out there waiting for me.
It’s past nine when Noah returns, the sound of his key in the front door—a door he never uses—making my skin crawl, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Fear. Not fear of what he’s going to say or do, but fear that I’m going to lose him. He’s had all day to come up with words. Words that will either hurt or heal me. I’ve had all day to try to come up with a way to sugarcoat my history. When he asks, I’ll tell him the truth. And the truth is simple: I fell in love with a man who had a power over me. And he used that power to destroy me.
Noah nods at Bradley when he enters the living room, and then he looks at me, tired eyes and a tired mind. “Come with me?”
Noah leads me up the stairs, through his room, and onto his balcony where he grips the railing, looks out into the darkness of the yard. I’m already fighting back the tears, fearful of the unknown. I can practically hear his mind tick, tick, ticking away as he tries to find a way to start the conversation. I know what it’s like. I used to do a lot of the same. There were so many nights when thoughts of Matt would keep me awake, and all the questions rang through my mind, one after the other. But when the time came for the one phone call we had with each other, I froze, didn’t know where to start. This time, I start the conversation for us. “How was your day?” I ask, standing next to him, my hands at my sides.
“Long,” he says with a sigh. He turns to me, those same sad, pitiful eyes on mine. “How was yours?”
I shrug.
His lips purse as he assesses me. “How are you feeling, Andie?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Noah sighs as he looks back out at the darkness, up at the stars. After a beat, he asks, “Can you show me where Andromeda is?”
“Um…” I raise my hand, point to the right, confusion blinding all other senses. This isn’t the conversation I expected. “I think it’s over there somewhere.”
He laughs once, a sound that doesn’t belong in this moment.
“Actually,” he says, taking my hand and moving it to the left. “It’s over there.”
“It is?”
He releases me, nodding once. “Do you know how I know?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve kind of been obsessed with the cosmos ever since you told me your name.”
My breath falters. So does my heart.
“You know, I read this book recently that said they discovered something out there…” He motions to the night sky, while my mind drowns in more confusion. “Scientists are calling it Dark Matter and Dark Energy. They say it makes up ninety-five percent of the universe, and the fucked-up part? No one knows what it is. Our entire existence on Earth relies on something that no one has any idea about. That stuff out there—it could be the reason why the world ends tomorrow, and we wouldn’t have a clue. The smartest men in the entire world have no idea what tomorrow will bring. No one knows. And instead of asking when or how… we ask why?” His words are rushed, as if a million thoughts are floating through his mind, and I listen, captivated by every word, every syllable.
“That’s the problem with people. Everyone thinks they know everything until they’re proven to know nothing.” He turns to me, towering over me. “You know what I did tonight?” He takes my hand, holds it to his. He doesn’t clasp it, doesn’t link our fingers. He just holds them together, connected, but not. And then he stares at the bond, as if he’d just created it. As if our connection is his art, and I am his muse.
“What did you do tonight?” I whisper. Barely.
“I went home. Watched a video my sister left for me to see after… just after. And you know what I learned?”
“What?” I croak, the weakness in his words creating my own. “What did you learn, Noah?”
He’s still staring at our hands, and I wish that he was staring at me… so I could look into those eyes, so I could feel something beautiful, not just hear it. “I learned that sometimes, there is no reason, and there are no answers. There just is. We exist in this world where we know nothing. Where we feel like we are nothing. But we are. We are, Andie. And everything we feel, the good, the bad, the dark… it matters. And it may not matter to you, but it matters to the people around you…” His fingers close around mine, tugging until my body’s pressed against his. His breath leaves him when he reaches up, his hand cupping my face, thumb wiping at my warm, wet tears. I choke on a sob I can no longer contain, because everything—everything he’s saying means more than he knows, more than he could possibly comprehend. It’s more than his knowledge, or his experience, or his fight. It’s everything beautiful and everything true. He whispers, his hands still warming my jaw, his eyes still roaming mine, “And so when I ask you how you’re feeling, you can’t say that it doesn’t matter. You just can’t. It should matter to you, because it matters to me. Your darkness matters, Andie.”
I wipe my tears into his t-shirt, drown my cry the same way. It doesn’t last long before his hands are on my jaw, lifting my face to his. His nose brushes mine, while I suck in a breath, hold it there, wait for the consequences of my actions to hit. Lips soft against mine, his kiss is slow, pure, honest. It’s everything he is. Everything I’m not used to. He’s the good fighting evil. The hero versing the villain. The light overpowering the dark.
I sob into his mouth, feel the weight of the world, the walls crash down around and over me, and with all the strength, the fight left in me, I push him away.
I push away the good.
I push away my hero.
I push away my light.
“I’m sorry,” I cry. “I can’t.”
“You can’t? Why, Andie?”
Why? Because I can’t have him as well as my purpose, my reward. I can’t have them both, and that thought squeezes at all my organs, reopens all my wounds. And so I take a step back, give him the only truth I’m brave enough to voice: “Because my heart belongs to someone else.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Andie
As much as I hate myself for what I did, I don’t regret it. I can’t. Because then all of this—everything that Milky is doing for me, every single second I stared out of those chain-link, barbed-wire fences counting down the days—it would all be for nothing.
Does it hurt? Of course, it does. The days are long, the same as they’ve always been. The nights are lonely, filled with heartache and tears and longing for a boy who somehow managed to crack my walls and fill my heart with hope. But, the fact that Noah no longer uses his bedroom door to come and go means I barely see him. The one time I did, he gave me a single, tight-lipped head nod, and walked away. That’s when I knew it was over for us… that whatever fleeting moment we had was gone.
I remind myself that it’s okay.
That I still have my purpose.
My reward.
But telling myself that and forcing myself to believe it are two different things. Maybe that’s why it’s been almost two weeks since that night, and I’ve only now found the courage to face my sister. No doubt Noah has told Bradley, and Bradley
’s told her.
Shame and fear.
Sometimes, they’re the same things.
I get out of the car and open the front door, knowing it’s Milky’s night off and that I can’t hide out at the public library pretending to study forever. Milky’s sitting on the couch, Bradley next to her. She’s crying, and he’s holding her, and I dump my bag on the kitchen counter and go to her, drop to my knees. “What happened? Is Grandma—Grandpa?”
“They’re fine,” Milky says, lowering her hands from her tear-filled eyes. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Bradley kisses her temple. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
Milky rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”
As soon as the front door closes behind him, I ask, “Did he just break up with you?”
“He may as well have,” she sobs, wiping her leaking nose across the sleeve of her hoody. “They’re moving out, Andie. Noah and Bradley—they put the ad up today for people to take over their lease.”
My heart drops to my stomach. “Why?”
“You know why!” she accuses.
“Because… because of Noah and me?”
“And now Bradley’s going to live somewhere else, and he’s not going to want me!”
“You don’t know that, Milky,” I assure, stroking her hair.
“Bullshit. Bradley’s nice, remember? And he’s young and free, and he can get any girl he wants. He’s not going to want to be with a twenty-one-year-old stripper! He’s only with me because it’s convenient!”
“That’s not—”
“What? Fair? Nothing’s fair, Andie. Not when it comes to us.” She stands up, marches to her room and slams the door behind her.